Supporting Bereaved Employees

Dr. Ben Baran is an associate professor at Cleveland State University and co-founder of Elevating What Works.

Almost every person will experience death-related grief at some point, and this certainly includes your employees. Unresolved grief costs organizations billions, yet research is starting to show how managers can best handle grief in the workplace through how they treat bereaved employees.

The CARE model, which stands for Communication, Accomodation, Recognition, and Emotional support, provides such guidance. It’s based on interviews with people who’ve returned to work following the death of a close relative and suggests a set of best practices as follows:

• Communication: Initiate or maintain two-way communication with an employee who has experienced the death of a loved one. Provide information about bereavement policies and any additional available support resources, such as an employee assistance program (EAP). Proactively suggest ways to help take burdens off the employee.
• Accommodation: The average bereavement leave in the United States is 3 to 5 days, but grief can affect employees for years. Consider how you might temporarily redesign the bereaved employee’s job or offer a flexible schedule. Coworkers might be able to help by sharing workloads.
• Recognition: Bereaved employees often appreciate even small gestures that acknowledge their loss. While these gestures can come from anyone, simple recognition from senior leaders can be extraordinarily supportive. Continuing on like nothing happened can actually be hurtful to bereaved employees because they may interpret it as a lack of caring.
• Emotional support: Demonstrating that you know the employee is going through a difficult time, along with warmth and kindness in your tone, is important. Ongoing individual displays of support through simple kind words as well as collective displays of support from the organization or department can go a long way in helping the bereaved employee cope.

While such support may increase the loyalty of that employee to their work organization, when managers remember CARE, they are most importantly helping a suffering person.

Learn the ins and outs of bereavement leave and why you should offer it to grieving employees.

This article first appeared in the b. Newsletter. Subscribe now!